Hunt Valley complex to be auctioned

COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE

One of the area's biggest suburban office complexes will go to auction Feb. 8, when Atlantic Auctions Inc. tries to sell the North Park Business Center in Hunt Valley.

The complex is made up of three buildings near York and Shawan roads. The buildings had been slated to be repossessed in a friendly foreclosure last month by Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of New York from developer Berkshire Corp.

"We have not taken the property back by deed in lieu of foreclosure," Teachers spokesman Tom Pinto said. But he would not say why Teachers chose to auction the property rather than take it through the less public route of accepting the deed without a foreclosure.

The project has been hurt in recent years by the loss of Black & Decker Corp. and the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. as major tenants. But North Park attracted one of Baltimore County's biggest leases last year when KCI Technologies agreed to lease 50,000-plus square feet of space.

The three buildings in the complex will be auctioned separately. The biggest is a five-story, 127,000-square-foot building that is 34 percent vacant, according to local brokers. The two others are both four-story buildings with a total of 163,559 square feet, one 83 percent vacant and the other 38 percent empty. The auctions will be held at the site.

Commercial properties to be in mass sale

A local auctioneer is teaming up with one of the area's largest commercial development and brokerage firms in what they hope will be an auction of up to 50 distressed commercial properties nTC aimed at the small-business market.

Michael Fox Auctioneers Inc. of Pikesville and Manekin Corp. of Baltimore are lining up 30 to 50 properties for a June 7 mass auction patterned on sales Fox has run in other cities. It will be similar to an auction of 70 Baltimore-Washington area properties sponsored by Carey Winston Co. of Chevy Chase and DeCaro Real Estate Auctions of Seaford, Del., in June.

"It's a proven method to get the true market value of the property," Fox Auctioneers Chairman William Z. Fox said. He said the auction can help the owners of small properties because the marketing budget will be much greater than individual small, often distressed properties can support.

The auction is targeting properties that will sell for between $500,000 and $3 million, although the auctioneer said the target is flexible. In that range, he expects to see small office buildings, neighborhood shopping centers, office-warehouse condominiums and other assets suited to the needs of small businesses. The auction will not include any single-family homes, he said.

He said the sponsors of the auction hope to limit listings at the auction to properties whose owners are motivated to sell, including some who will offer their properties without a minimum bid. That would be a slight contrast to the Carey Winston/DeCaro auction last year, when the two Baltimore city properties on the agenda were pulled because bids were too low.

One of those buildings, the Equitable Building at 10 N. Calvert St., was later turned over by its owners to their lender. The other, 1001 Cathedral Street, was recently sold to Chase-Brexton Clinic Inc.